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15 World Bank. World Development Indicators Online. Subscription available at Http:// http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0,,contentMDK:21725423~pagePK:64133150~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419,00.html Accessed February 10, 2010.

22 Cañizález, Andrés. “Media and government in Venezuela: what price freedom?” Media Development 2: 25-48, 2008.

23 Cañizález, Andrés. “Media and government in Venezuela: what price freedom?” Media Development 2: 25-48, 2008.

24 Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Democracy and Human Rights in Venezuela, December 30, 2009, available at http://cidh.org/pdf%20files/VENEZUELA%202009%20ENG.pdf, p. 87 paragraph 343.

25 Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Democracy and Human Rights in Venezuela, December 30, 2009, available at http://cidh.org/pdf%20files/VENEZUELA%202009%20ENG.pdf, p. 97 paragraph 373 .

26 Reporters Without Borders, “Presidential Speeches Should Have to be Broadcast by Just One Station,” February 3, 2010, http://www.rsf.org/Presidential-speeches-should-have.html, (accessed February 21, 2010).

Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Democracy and Human Rights in Venezuela. Organization of American States. December 30, 2009. Available at http://cidh.org/pdf%20files/VENEZUELA%202009%20ENG.pdf. Associated Press. “Anti-Chávez TV Vows to Maintain Tough Stance.” The New York Times. February 12, 2010. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/12/world/AP-LT-Venezuela-Media.html?_r=1&emc=eta1.

Reporters Without Borders. “Presidential Speeches Should Have to be Broadcast by Just One Station.” February 3, 2010. http://www.rsf.org/Presidential-speeches-should-have.html. (Accessed February 21, 2010).

World Bank. World Development Indicators Online. Subscription available at Http:// http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0,,contentMDK:21725423~pagePK:64133150~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419,00.html Accessed February 10, 2010

Monday, March 01, 2010

1 For a full discussion of the history, ideology and organisation of the Cuban health system, and its medical diplomacy and biotechnology development, see Julie M. Feinsilver, Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

2 Ibid., pp. 37-40.

3 Médicos de la familia y cobertura según provincias, Anuario Estadístico de Salud 2007, Fuente: Registro de profesionales de la salud y Dirección de Atención Primaria, 2007, http://bvs.sld.cu and Oficina Nacional de Estadisticas, Anuario Estadística 2008 (Edición 2009), Tables 19.1, 19.4 and 19.5 Coverage was reorganized in late 2007. There were 932 fewer family doctors in 2008 than 2006, which could be due to a number of factors such as natural attrition, further specialization, system rationalization or defection while abroad.

18 Interview with Carlos Lovo, Advisor to the Salvadoran Minister of Health at that time, Washington, 30 April 2009.

19 Cuban Cooperation, Website of the Cuban Governmental Cooperation in the Health Sector, http://www.cubacoop.com (available in Spanish and English); and ‘Cubans to help boost local health sector’, Jamaica Observer, 10 May 2008.

20 Feinsilver, Healing The Masses, Chapter 6.

21 ‘Cuban medical cooperation in South Africa highlighted’, Cuba Direct (online),26 May 2009, available from http://emba.cubaminrex.cu.

22 http://www.cubacoop.com.

23 Prensa Latina, 11 April 2008.

24 http://www.cubacoop.com.

25 AFP, ‘Massive UN vote in support of lifting US embargo on Cuba’, 29 October30 2008.

36 Interviews with Doctors Félix Rigoli and Eduardo Guerrero, PAHO, Washington, 30 April 2009; UVS website http://www.uvirtual.sld.cu; Steve Brouwer, ‘Fidel’s WMDs versus Bush’s WMDs: World medical doctors are more powerful than weapons of mass destruction’, 14 November 2008 and ‘WMDs – World Medical Doctors – now being produced in Venezuela’, 13 November 2008, both posted to the blog site, Venezuela Notes, and available at http://www.venezuelanotes.blogspot.com; and ‘Cuba: More Doctors for the World’, MEDICC Review, 14 April 2008, available from http://www.medicc.org.

37 Personal communication from Saul Landau, whose daughter was one of those who passed the FMG in the US, 8 May 2009.

38 Data on medical graduates from a personal communication from Dr. Francisco Rojas Ochoa, Distinguished Professor and Editor of Revista cubana de salud pública, February 3, 2010; and Prensa Latina, 11 April 2008.

40 Carmelo Mesa-Lago, ‘The Cuban economy in 2008-2009: Internal and external challenges, state of the reforms and perspectives’, International Seminar on Cuba, Tulane University and Centro de Investigación y Adiestramiento Político Administrativo, San Jose, Costa Rica, 3-4 February 2009 (to be published in a book edited by Paolo Spadoni).

41 Interview with Dr. Félix Rigoli, PAHO, 30 April 2009.

42 Tal Abbady, ‘Hundreds of Cuban medical workers defecting to US while overseas’, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 10 October 2007 (posted at http://www.coha.org).

44 Ibid. and Pierre Sean Brotherton, ‘We have to think like capitalists but continue being socialists: Medicalized subjectivities, emergent capital, and socialist entrepreneurs in post-Soviet Cuba’, American Ethnologist, 35(2), May 2008.

45 Abbady, ‘Hundreds of Cuban medical workers defecting’.

46 The nature of the activity of defection makes valid estimates difficult. Neither Homeland Security nor the State Department’s Cuba Desk would provide any information and said that they did not have that data. Abbady cites Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s office indicating that 1,000 Cuban doctors have come to the US under a special program announced in 2006.

47 US Department of Homeland Security, US Customs and Immigration Services, ‘Fact Sheet: Parole for Cuban Medical Personnel in Third Countries’, 19 September 2006.

48 Mike Ceasar, ‘Cuban doctors abroad helped to defect by new us visa policy’, World Politics Review, 1 August 2007.

51 On the disparity between rhetoric and practice and the nature of doctor-patient relations in the Cuban health system, see Pierre Sean Brotherton, ‘Macroeconomic change and the biopolitics of health in Cuba’s special period’, Journal of Latin American Anthropology, 10(2), 2005; Brotherton, ‘We have to think like capitalists’; and Elise Andaya, ‘The gift of health’.